PROCESS REPORT At the Department of Industrial Design, Masters Program For the Module Unaware Objects, dated June 2015 By Jeroen Hol, Bram Naus & Pepijn Verburg
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INTRODUCTION
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Design goal The goal of this project is to create a tangible music player that allows people to experience past music again in the future. With the vast amount of music instantly available (e.g. through Spotify, Deezer or iTunes) it is hard to keep track of what music you have enjoyed in the past; the relation with music is very dynamic nowadays. The design team felt an immediate affiliation with these observations in music and the principles of PhotoBox (Odom et al., 2012). They questioned whether the same findings would apply to a temporary medium like sound in contrary to the permanent medium of a printed photo. How would people appreciate a temporal engagement with randomly selected music from your past? The design team wants to achieve this by motivating people to listen to their past music through a beautiful, friendly, inviting, open-ended unaware object.
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PROCESS OVERVIEW
PHASE ONE: EXPLORATION
PHASE ONE: EXPLORATION
PHASE TWO: PROOF OF CONCEPT PHASE THREE: LIVING WITH PROTOTYPE
PHASE FOUR: RE-ENGINEERING
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PHASE ONE:
EXPLORATION
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Inspiration A great example of a slow interaction with technology is a pick-up player (at least in comparison with the currently available technologies). The design team was inspired by its simplistic and poetic interaction of putting the needle on the rotating disk. Even the younger generation still knows this interaction. The interaction of moving the needle has been
abstracted to a single rotating disk in the center of a bigger circle give it no fixed orientation. Also, one side of the circle has a corner piece attached to let it stand on its side. The shape of an unaware object needs to versatile enough to allow people to shift it around, rotate it and to let them explore a place in their household in their own way. The shape is meant to keep a lot of these possibilities open.
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Prototype The initial prototype is made out of massive pieces of MDF with a rotating inner circle. Bearings are added into the circle to let it run smoothly. Qualities were the weight (nice and heavy to put on the side), the variable orientation (easy to move around) and the size of the inner circle (fits your hand palm). The design team aimed for an aesthetically pleasing rotation of the inner circle. Several patterns of wood in combination with metal were tried out.
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PHASE TWO:
PROOF OF CONCEPT
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Solidworks The design team built a 3D-model in SolidWorks around the dimensions of the selected motor. The height was slightly increased to fit the motor.
Layered prototype The availability of a laser cutter made the design team decide to make the prototype fully layered to fit MDF material.
Actuation The most important challenge is the actuation of the object. A standard geared DC motor was chosen that could run fairly slowly. The inner circle is driven by a belt connected to a set of two 90 degrees gears attached to the motor. A spring is required to put tension on the belt.
Encoder An infrared LED and receiver are added to register the rotation of the inner circle. This will allow the design team to see when the circle is sped up or slowed down by the user.
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PHASE THREE:
LIVING WITH PROTOTYPE
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Introduction For a period of two days one of the design team members lived with the prototype to experience the initial interactions with the unaware object. Several observations are made in this period that are of importance for the future development.
(2) There were strong urges to check when the next song is played. This is clearly part of the excitement phase also observed in Photobox (Odom et al., 2012). Finally,
Observations (1) First of all there were indeed vivid memories when past songs are played.
(3) a point of improvement involves the visibility of the turning. Without any textures on the MDF it is very hard to see and it was only noticed by the sound.
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PHASE FOUR:
RE-ENGINEERING
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Solidworks The assembly is made much easier; the design team can now assemble the prototype in phases instead of having multiple mechanical parts attached to a single layer of MDF.
Aluminum The aluminum is anodized for a clean finish and antiscratch layer.
Veneer The wooden veneer is put on MDF to make sure it will be straight. A new procedure with the laser cutter was tried where two sides of this composite material are individually adjusted.
Result The final result matches the goal of making the prototype beautiful, friendly, inviting and open-ended; the choice of materials is aesthetically pleasing, the orientation is dynamic.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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References Odom, W., Selby, M., Sellen, A., Kirk, D., Banks, R. & Regan. T. (2012). Photobox: on the design of a slow technology. Spotify (2015). Libspotify SDK. https://developer.spotify. com/technologies/libspotify/. Visited on 15th of June 2015.
Acknowledgements We would like to thank Ron Wakkary and Will Odom for their guidance during this design process. Their enthusiasm gave us a great amount of motivation to make this project a reality. Also, we want to show our gratitude towards Enlightment Arts (www.enlightment.nl) for their help with bending and anodizing the aluminum to give an amazing finishing touch. Finally, we give all credits for the beautiful pictures found on page 1 and page 34 until 38 to one of our fellow students: Wouter van der Wal (www.woutdesigner.com).
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THANK YOU FOR READING